June 15 2012

3:11 AM

Graeme McDowell surged into a tie for second with birdies
on his last two holes Thursday

By Helen Ross, PGATOUR.COM

SAN FRANCISCO -- Several hours before his tee time in the first
round of the U.S. Open, Graeme McDowell told his friends on Twitter
that he was watching the TV broadcast to get a feel for the
competition and the course.

"Looks tough but good golf gets rewarded," he tweeted.

McDowell was particularly interested in the way Tiger Woods was
making his way around The Olympic Club on the way to a 69. The
Northern Irishman was similarly steady on Thursday afternoon,
making birdie on his last two holes to join Woods in a tie for
second, three strokes off the lead.

"I saw the way Tiger kind of played this golf course, and he
played it very I think workman-like would be the way I would
describe his round,' McDowell said. "He just did what this golf
course asks you to do. ... You just got play very disciplined golf
and I did that well today."

McDowell knows U.S. Open golf, too. He won the 2010 national
championship when it was played at Pebble Beach, about two hours
south of San Francisco. He likes courses like The Olympic Club that
demand a player use his head as well as his clubs.

"There's not often you play a golf course like this and there
aren't really many options, you just got to stand there and hit
certain shots at the right times and some pins out there today you
could go at and some pins that you couldn't go at," McDowell said.
"The greens are just rock hard. You really got to respect the first
bounce on these greens. And there's just places on these greens you
just can't miss the ball."

McDowell, who hit 10 fairways and 12 greens, actually had four
good looks at birdie in his final holes. He missed birdie putts of
8 and 12 feet at Nos. 15 and 16, then got up and down from a
greenside bunker at the par-5 17th and make his 29th putt of the
day count at the last as the 15-footer dropped into the hole.

"I felt like I squeezed as much as I could out of that round,"
McDowell said. "... It's a tough test out there. But, yeah, just I
hung in well with the putter. It's funny, I left a few birdie
chances out there, on 15, 16, but a couple of key par saves. So no,
I'll take my 1 under and run.

McDowell played well early in the year, finishing second to
Woods at the Arnold Palmer Invitational presented by MasterCard,
and just last month he was runner-up at the Volvo World Match Play.
But McDowell, who missed his last two cuts on the PGA TOUR, hasn't
won on either side of the Atlantic since 2010 so he hopes to build
on Friday’s solid play.

"I've been hitting the ball pretty quell well and not scoring
well and today it was today was a lot more disciplined golf and a
lot more focused golf and probably the best tee to green I've hit
it in a few months," McDowell said. "... My caddie said if you
can't draw some confidence out of this round today, there's
something wrong with you. So I think I know what he was getting at
-- take the positives and try to feed that back into the game
again."